by Saxon, K. E.
He deserved an honest answer, though, so she took in a deep breath and said, “About four months ago, I met a woman in my yoga class—a therapist, of sorts. We became friends. I—I was so stressed—pent-up anger, not sleeping, eating more than I should—anyway, she told me about a particular type of assertiveness training that she’d been teaching for awhile and invited me over for a free tutorial. I did, and it’s been part of my weekly workout ever since."
Chas’s eyes narrowed. “Workout?” He pointed at her outfit. “In that? What the hell goes on in there?”
She tugged on the hem of her dress and coughed. “You can’t tell?”
His eyes tracked from her face down her body and back up again. The knuckles on his fists turned white as he twisted them around the steering wheel. She only hoped it wasn’t her neck he was imagining there instead.
“S and M?” he said, more as a snarl than a question.
“Nn—not exactly.” Okay, here goes. “It’s more a master-slave thing. You know. Giving commands that the other person follows.”
“Sexual commands?”
She twisted her fingers in her lap and shrugged. “Sometimes.” She took in a deep breath and released it. “Most times—at the end at least—after.”
“Ohmygod.” He turned his head and glared out the windshield. A muscle spasmed in his jaw. “Like what?” he said. His lips had barely moved, so she knew his teeth were clenched.
“It’s not what you think,” she rushed to say. “There’s no intercourse, no sexual contact at all. It’s just—” She twisted the crop in her hands. “Afterward—after the session—the client is provided a tube of-of lubricant and, if they want, they can m-masturbate themselves.”
The sound of Chas swallowing carried across the car to her. “Holy Mother of Christ.” He swung around and faced her full-on. “Are you telling me—You—,” he jabbed a finger at her, “the sweet, giving, fine, upstanding person I asked to be my wife this morning, the girl your sister Isadora calls ‘goody-two-shoes’, is a-a-a Dominatrix? For hire?”
Hot blood rushed to her face and neck. Goody-two-shoes. How many times had she heard that sarcastic, demeaning term fly from people’s mouths ever since her sister had given it to her when they were children? Paula had told her not to let it slide anymore, and this time—especially with Chas—she wasn’t going to. Delilah threw the crop down and crossed her arms over her chest. “I detest being called that! I am NOT goody-two-shoes.”
“Clearly.”
“Fuck you.” Delilah’s heart flew into her throat. Had she really said that?
For a good minute, they sat there in silence. Delilah figured Chas was too stunned to speak. That was fine with her. She needed the time to figure out if she’d blown her chance with him or not. She pushed a cuticle back with her thumbnail. “Tonight was the last time I was going to do it. Just to let you know.”
Silence.
She looked at his profile. Tension lines made grooves around his mouth and eyes. He hated her now. She loved him, but he—if he ever had loved her—loathed the sight of her now. Her hands shook as she dragged the gold chain that held his engagement ring from around her neck. “Here, this is yours, I believe. Don’t worry, I’ve only told my stepmother about our engagement—and believe me, she won’t be surprised that you’ve broken it off already. She didn’t believe you wanted me in the first place.”
* * *
Chas started a little when she thrust the ring at him. His mind had been whirring from one disjointed thought to the other, mostly centered around how he was going to keep Delilah’s dirty little secret just that—a secret—and maintain the image as the perfect, moral, financially sound couple he’d envisioned for them while he saved his family’s company from ruin. “What’s this for? Put it on. I’m not breaking the engagement.”
“You’re not?”
“No.” He watched her slide the ring off the chain and put it on her finger. “How many others know about this—this perversion of yours?”
This prejudice really got her goat. Paula was one of the kindest, giving people Delilah knew, and her clients were gentlemen and ladies of the highest order. Her eyes spit blue lightning rods at him. “It’s not a perversion. It’s an alternate, highly creative lifestyle. You should try it sometime, you might actually enjoy it.” She pulled a black elastic band from the pocket of her trench coat and dragged her hair into a ponytail. “A lot of businessmen do, you know. They’re the most frequent clients.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
She placed her hand over his. It still gripped the steering wheel, he noticed, so with effort he forced himself to let go of it and take her hand. “No one knows my identity, Chas. I’ve been very careful to keep the mask on.”
“You didn’t have it on just now.”
She shrugged. “My friend’s house is also just a house. The clients come in through a different doorway, usually around nine o’clock.”
“But that outfit. The neighbors must know.”
She squeezed his hand. “No they don’t. Yes, I guess they could have a suspicion, but these are common nightclub clothes for this part of town, too. Well, except for the back of the dress—but I wear the coat until I’m inside, so no worries.”
He looked around. There really wasn’t a lot of activity outside right now. She was probably right. The people that lived around here were the artsy, bohemian types. More likely to keep secrets than to expose them. It’s why they moved to this area in the first place: freedom of expression. For the first time since discovering her a few minutes ago, he allowed himself to relax.
Wait a minute. The back of the dress? A fleeting image of a low-slung dress with an opening that dipped below the base of the spine to show a tantalizing view of Delilah’s butt cleavage went through his mind, making his skin blaze and his cock throb to life again.
“Show me.”
“Wh-what?”
“The back of the dress. Show me. My place, or yours. You pick.”
* * *
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, she’d done it now. She pressed her fingertips against the racing pulse between her breasts and tried to catch her breath. “My—ahem—my place is fine.” She sat back and suppressed a grin. She was finally going to make love to Chas. After all these months. Darting a sideways glance at him, she chewed her lip. She just hoped he couldn’t tell that she was—mortifyingly—a novice.
* * *
Chas was already regretting his lapse in judgment by the time he swung Delilah’s front door open and ushered her inside fifteen minutes later. His plan to keep things platonic between them was quickly becoming a hard sell to his overactive, recently underutilized libido.
He followed her into her country cottage style living room and before he could stop her, she slid the coat off and slung it over the back of a wingback chair.
His lungs stopped working. Fuck. It wasn’t an expletive, it was a barked command from his male psyche. Gorgeous ass. How the hell had he missed that bit of gorgeous gorgeousness these past months? With effort he forced himself to take a breath. It only went halfway down.
She wandered further across the living room toward a door leading into what he could see was the kitchen. “Would you like a glass of wine?” she tossed over her shoulder.
He coughed to open up the constriction in his throat. “Yes. Thanks.” His voice, embarrassingly, was strained. Okay, bucko, get a grip. This is as far as it goes. Drink the wine and get the hell out of here. Pronto.
As he absently listened to the familiar sounds of movement in the other room, Chas scrubbed the perspiration from his palms onto his pant legs and sat down on Delilah’s sofa. He picked up a photo of her and Isadora, set it back down, got up walked over to the fireplace, looked at more of her family photos, turned, straightened the shade on her lamp, and then sat back down again and crossed one leg over the other. He’d already gotten an eyeful of the healthy set of lungs she sported and the continually repeating image of burying his face in them ha
d left his dick at half-mast for the past forty-five minutes. Now this. The clammy wetness of perspiration under his arms seeped into his consciousness.
He leapt to his feet and made a dash to the door.
He swung it open. “I just realized I left an important document on my desk—I’ll call you later!” he yelled to her.
He ran out and didn’t look back.
God, he’d nearly ruined everything. He would not be that much of a cad to her. It was bad enough that he’d asked her to marry him under false pretenses—even given her his ex’s ring. But he did have some standards of behavior he wouldn’t break. And taking sexual advantage of a woman was one of them. Especially one he liked as well as he liked Delilah.
Better to set a time to talk to her tomorrow, in the daylight, in neutral territory, about how they would proceed together after his discovery this evening.
* * *
CHAPTER FOUR
Delilah stumbled into her kitchen the next morning and switched the light on over the sink. With a wide yawn and a stretch of an arm over her head, she used the other to fill the coffee carafe with water and pour it into the maker.
Chas had called her last night, as he’d promised, and they were to meet for lunch to discuss plans for an engagement party later in the week and, she was sure, how she was to conduct herself now that she was his fiancée. Image was everything. She knew that—hadn’t her whole family been both the servants to and the victims of their social image for as long as she could remember? Wasn’t it her stepmother’s driving reason for getting up in the morning?
And now it was all just within Delilah’s grasp to gain it back. As long as she didn’t blow it. And she supposed, she almost had last night, if Chas hadn’t discovered her secret.
She twisted her lower lip between her thumb and forefinger. It hadn’t been a lie—there really was little danger of anyone discovering who she was. But still. With the engagement, and the newly earned fortune, she shouldn’t have taken a chance.
So. She supposed it had been a boon that Chas had discovered her.
Biting down on her thumbnail, she leaned against the kitchen counter. How had he found her, anyway? The coffee made its final burbling noises and she took a mug from the shelf above it.
A crash sounded in the living room.
Delilah dropped the mug and whirled around. It clattered to the tile floor and broke.
While her heart rocketed about in her chest, she grabbed her cell phone from the counter, slid the chef’s knife out of the wood block, and tiptoed on shaky legs across the kitchen. Her thumb firmly over the panic button on her cell, she peeked into the living room.
“We-e-e-lll, hello, Lila, dear.”
It was Endora. Endora from Bewitched. Bright red hair, purple high-necked gown with lime-green cape and all. A tipped-over antique wire hat stand lay on the wood floor next to where she sat. In hopes the hallucination would fade, Delilah opened and closed her eyes several times.
It didn’t work.
“Wh-what’s going on?” She looked around, but everything was fuzzy. “Where—? How—?”
“Falderal and fiddle-de-dee. No need to get into such a dither. It’s only me, dear. Your friendly family fairy flitting in to fix your folly.”
Endora—or whatever her name was—unfurled the leg she’d tucked under her on Delilah’s mauve and blue pinstriped sofa and swept her long silver-nailed finger in the direction of the chair next to her. “Have a seat, dear. You look a bit piqued. And do put that knife away before you slice off a finger, will you?”
This is not really happening. It can’t be. Delilah moved forward on numb limbs and placed the knife on the end table next to the chair before collapsing into the seat. The phone, she tucked safely into her lap. She couldn’t take her eyes off the spectre in front of her. “I know what this is,” she mumbled to herself, “I ate chocolate cake with wine before I went to sleep. I’m actually in some kind of sugar and alcohol induced nightmare,”—she swung her glance around the room and slapped her cheek—“I must be.”
“Don’t be silly, dear, and I see no reason to abuse yourself in such a manner. Sit still and I shall finish this business and be off on my next assignment.”
Delilah’s eyes narrowed. “Okay, if this isn’t a dream, why do you look like a television character from the last show I remember watching?”
The fairy laughed. It was full-throated, yet gentle. “Why, dear,” she said, “is it not plain? Because it amuses me to do so!” She lifted both hands and snapped her fingers three times, her thin silver bangles clinking with each new movement. “Now, listen closely, or all will fall to muck and mire: Under no circumstances are you to release control of your fortune to your fiancé.”
Delilah’s spine stiffened. “Bu—”
The fairy waved her finger at her. “Tut-tut.”
“But Chas is a financial genius—”
“Yes, dear, but if you give over control, the fortune will—,” snapping her fingers again, a puff of patchouli-scented purple smoke burst forth and just as quickly dissipated, “vanish. Just like that the moment he tries to use it.”
“But why?”
The fairy gave a Gallic shrug. “It is the way of the magic: It is for you and you alone.” She tapped her finger on her fuchsia-lined lips. “Unless…”
“Unless?”
“Well, there is one way to prevent that outcome: You must find the key.”
“The key?”
“Why, yes, dear. The key to your heart’s desire, of course.”
“But, I already know what my heart’s desire is—Chas.”
“Precisely. See? You’re already halfway there!”
“I—I don’t understand.”
The fairy patted her lacquered bouffant hair. “I’m confident you will in time.”
“How am I supposed to do this?”
“I cannot say, dear. As the charm is yours, so is the task of unlocking it.” She stood and moved a couple of paces away. “Well, I’m off again. Do not forget what I’ve told you, dear. Ta-ta.”
In a blink, she was gone.
* * *
“So you see, Delilah, it’s probably a good idea if I try and invest at least, oh, I’d say maybe five million to start. I’ll just need you to sign over the rights for me to manage it,” Chas said. He could feel the perspiration under his arms and made a show of wiping his mouth with his napkin to get the sweat off his upper lip before she could see it. He slid the legal documents and the Mont Blanc fountain pen across the white-linen tablecloth until it bumped her left hand.
She settled her fork onto her plate with little sound and then cleared her throat, which put his nerves further on edge, before she said, “I-I’ve decided to handle the investments myself, Chas.”
Chas’s heart dipped into his stomach. “Wow,” he managed to say with an unconcerned smile, “that’s a big shift from yesterday when you told me you had no idea how to handle them on your own. What changed your mind?”
She looked down at her lap and straightened the napkin there. “Oh, you know. I just thought it was time to be a grown up and learn these things for myself.” Finally, she lifted her gaze to his and smiled. “Now,” she said in a brighter voice, “let’s plan our engagement party, shall we?”
“This is really not a good idea, Delilah.”
“Chas, don’t worry! It’s going to be fine, I promise. Do you want to hire an orchestra or go with a DJ?”
“What if you lose your shirt? It could happen, you know.”
“I’ll be careful. Should we have dinner served by wait staff or serve it buffet style?”
Chas could do nothing but follow her lead at this point or risk looking like the fortune hunter he truly was. “Yes,” he said and put the documents back inside his briefcase before taking hold of her hand across the table.
* * *
Delilah let out an inaudible sigh and did a quick look at her watch. “Where should we have it?” Only fifteen more minutes and their lunch date wo
uld be over. Backpedaling on the investment help she’d requested from Chas hadn’t been too difficult, thankfully, and he’d yet to mention anything about what had taken place between them the night before—or, well, hadn’t taken place between them—so she figured he wasn’t as freaked out by it as he’d seemed last night. Which was a good thing.
“How about my family’s estate? It’s certainly large enough,” he said. “My aunt loves to host big parties, so if you want, I can call her and ask her to help us get it together.” He filled his wine glass for a second time and took a long swallow.
She sat forward and placed her hand on his forearm. “We don’t have to have it this week—we can wait a week or two if you want.”
“No, no.” He let out a cough. “No.” His smile at first seemed a little strained, which gave her a similar tension in the back of her neck, but then, as he met her eyes and looked into them, it softened. “I’m too excited over my good fortune in winning you. I can’t wait to brag to the world about it.” He leaned in and touched his lips to hers and her heart did a little flip.
A thrill of excitement ran through her and she let her hand move from his arm to the back of his hand. “Well. If you’re sure,” she breathed. When she lifted her lids, she found an odd look on his face, kind of like the one he’d had last night when she’d shown him the back of her dress.
“You want to come over for dinner tonight?” she asked. And stay the night? She yearned to say the words aloud. Even felt them form on her tongue, opened her mouth to say them, but her heart started pounding so hard that it flushed her skin and made her sweat, then her throat constricted and she just couldn’t force her vocal chords to cooperate.
He stood up. “Sure,” he said as he helped her rise from her chair. “It’ll be late though, if that’s okay. Probably around eight-thirty?”
“Eight-thirty’s fine.” Good. That would give her plenty of time to buy a sexy nightie and maybe, just maybe, figure out what to do with him once she got him in her bed.